Happy New Year to all our friends and family! After 7 months in Vancouver, we were ready to return to Fortuitous and ready her for the next cruising season. We left Vancouver and our youngest son, Jeff, drove us to Seattle for departure to Panama City Dec. 8th. Our eldest son, Greg, is joining us for this season and Jeff, and fiancé Sarah, will join us for 3 weeks in January. We flew overnight and arrived Dec. 9th.
We saw this poster in the airport and, since Tiger Wood’s scandal had just unfolded, we couldn’t resist the photo.
We stayed in a hotel in town as we couldn’t get the ferry to Isla Taboga, where Fortuitous has been kept on a mooring for the past seven months. We found Fortuitous in decent shape, considering the length of time she’d been on her own. We had mildew and required new batteries as our house batteries had kicked the bucket. For the first couple of nights, until Greg and Ralph brought over our new batteries from Panama City, after 5:30 we had no lights. Taboga is a lovely little island.
Ralph and Greg went off for a day hike on Taboga. I’d heard about the critters in these photos, so I stayed home.
Unfortunately, there is nothing to show scale but they tell me the spider was as large as Greg’s hand!
This is the view from the top of the hill...another reason not to go, in my opinion...not the view, the hill!
Once we were up and running, we moved back to Balboa Yacht Club, situated on the entrance to the canal. These cruise ships and freighters are an everyday/every night experience. Some leave no wake at all, some wakes can jar you from your semi-sound sleep. We’ll be glad not to be here.
We have been working hard every day to get Fortuitous up to par. A new dodger is on the way, as ours is toast. We’re also having our sail-covers re-sewn. We had to re-do our lexan storm windows, as well, as we could no longer see out of them...lots of money spent.
We took a well deserved day off and toured old town Panama. Greg took some of these shot; I’ll let you guess which ones!
There was some sort of festival going on somewhere as we passed these kids in the street.
From our table in a cute little sidewalk cafe, we could see this young mom on her balcony.
There were other sights to see, apparently!
Here we are enjoying our cold drinks at the cafe.
As you can see, the area is pretty run down.
Picturesque.
Greg decided he needed a straw hat. Across the street he found the $5 hat of his dreams!
One of Greg’s artistic shots...he’s good at it, much like his Dad.
We came upon a beach baseball game...wouldn’t want to be out in the field! Look carefully at the terraine!
Back at the yacht club, we were fortunate enough to see this Mexican square rigger come by. All hands were on deck, or in the rigging. It was quite a spectacle!
Greg has been a tremendous help with all the work involved in re-commissioning Fortuitous. Here he is up the mast installing our new deck light.
For a “break”, we headed out to the Perlas Islands for Christmas. We saw this fishing boat, bedecked with frigate birds, enroute.
Greg fished up a storm and caught at least 3, but all came off the hook.
I guess it would have helped if we had a net to haul them in, rather than trying to use a bucket! And maybe a decent rod instead of a stick. As I type this, they are off decking themselves out in some better equipment.
Once anchored in the Perlas, we put up our Santa windsock again!
Greg has made a “Monkey Golf” game. Here he’s assembling it on the beach.
Voila!! We had a great time playing it.
Fool that I am I had bought a small turkey...not contemplating how much work it would be, now how hot. I guess I was still in Vancouver mode. However, we invited over Stan and Lyn, of SV Homers’ Odyssey and had a great evening. Lyn supplied a great salad and dessert and it was fun to share our Christmas with them.
The water was quite clear and Greg had great fun feeding our mouldy hamburger buns to these fish.
Back in Balboa, we often have these fishermen come through and entertain us.
We’ve seen some of the most beautiful sunsets here.
We are awaiting Jeff’s and Sarah’s arrival tomorrow afternoon. We’ll do a day of touring, and lots more provisioning and cleaning off the decks of Fortuitous to ready us for our transit through the Panama Canal. At this point we are scheduled to go through Monday, Jan. 11th. Wish us luck.
Once we transit, we will be out of range of internet for quite some time, so it will be impossible to update the blog with transit photos or photos of the San Blas Islands, or Kuna Yala, as it is called. You’ll have to wait for further instalments once we’re back in civilization.
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